Politico reports that at a Hamptons fundraiser last Saturday, Cuomo told his well-heeled supporters that, contrary to all available evidence, he could win the New York mayoral race as an independent—because he was likely to have the implicit support of President Donald Trump.
The imperative of defeating Mamdani justified the new coalition Cuomo is trying to create of his die-hard loyalists (who are Democrats) with Trump Republicans.
Some of that latter group might be tempted to back Curtis Sliwa, the actual GOP nominee in the race. Cuomo told these donors, “We can minimize [the Sliwa] vote, because he’ll never be a serious candidate. And Trump himself, as well as top Republicans, will say the goal is to stop Mamdani. And you’ll be wasting your vote on Sliwa.” Cuomo went on to emphasize that he’d be a mayor who could find common ground with Trump:
And equally obvious that it’s a strategy that has outlived its usefulness for Dems.
The more I think about this it’s increasingly clear that D is at a threeway crossroads.
A: Continue to blame voters for not buying what they are selling, and for wanting more than “Not Trump, sorry Gaza.” This is the “Let’s become the party for the Republicans that still like to use nice language for their policies of oppression, like the Cheneys and the Romneys” choice. (This is where I fully expect them to head, because it’s clearly what Kamala was told she would be ushering in, and it’s clearly why they have worked so hard against Bernie, Mamdani, AOC, etc.)
If they hold out long enough, this will probably work to buy them votes since the non-maga Republicans are going to want someplace to go eventually, and maga isn’t letting go of R. Non-maga R will see progressives becoming increasingly alienated from establishment D, listen to Cuomo (and plenty of others) talking like a Republican with D behind his name, and it will be an obvious destination for them.
We can go back to 1980 or earlier with regard to social issues and civil rights, and conservatives can declare victory.
B: Realize that anyone who could have brought themselves to vote Trump in 2024 (and frankly, in late 2020) and decided to pull the lever for him was never ever ever going to vote Kamala, no matter what she did, and for the love of god stop trying to win those voters, and instead integrate some progressive platform positions into core D principles, then fight for them instead of always falling back on the pearl-clutching about moderates who might go vote for Goebbels if we let kids get free lunches or give serious effort to police reform, or whatever badly needed improvement we’re being told has to be thrown on the altar of appeasement this week.
edit - and on the topic of appeasement, police reform seems to be the first thing a Democrat is pressured to abandon. Next will probably be Trans rights.
C: Keep doing what they are doing, be useless to everyone but centrists, and watch R dominate and destroy and tear down everything we as a nation have always claimed we believe in and replace it with what it turns out we actually believe in, which is apparently profits above all, self above others, and oppression before charity based on what I’ve seen in recent decades. We can all get tossed in a mass grave in a few decades when we can no longer do something that helps the oligarchs obtain more wealth, but that’s OK because we’ll be in production mode with no abortions and a compliant, uneducated, working class.
Edit: I realized that arguably C is potentially a fork of A, not a separate choice, but I’m leaving it anyway. It will remain true that there’s only one choice where I will vote D in the future, and also true that A and/or C are the only plausible future destinations for the country if they don’t choose B, IMO.
My Kamala vote was my last R-lite vote after far too many in my life.